Annie is the latest member of the Ideoplex household. She had been staying at Animals in Distress, but we’re all much happier with her here.

Sam Stevens Tab of Tabs, Cat about town Beloved baby to Eileen Best bud to Dwight Big bro to Mark
1987 - 2007 He will live in our hearts forever

It didn’t happen unless you wrote it down.

What you heard may not be what they thought they said. And what you thought you said may not be what they heard. You always need to write it down and share it.

Especially when you are talking to a customer. Because the odds are good that what you deliver will not be what the customer thought they were going to get.

See also:

If you don’t write it down, it never happened.

A man’s got to know his limitations.

A successful technology company has to steer a course between the rock of good enough and the hard place of anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Good enough is by definition, good enough. It gets the job done. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pack any wow. And you need some wow to build the word of mouth that wins you acceptance on main street.

Doing well provides lots of opportunity for wow. But it can take too long to bring your product to market. Time that your competitors, who have deftly balanced good enough against doing well, will use to take your market away from you.

I have a serious case of perfectionism. So advising me that something is good enough is invariably the right thing to do. Because good enough to me is pretty darn good to most others. And there will be a generous helping of doing well.

But if you’re the type who stops when things are good enough, then you probably need a good strong kick to take things to the next level. Because your idea of good enough is apt to be another’s idea of not quite. And you’re probably missing that little something that makes a product special.

I never thought that this would happen.

Once upon a time, I was pleased to find products Made in China. No more.

Recently, Sam Stevens sampled and savored a new canned cat food. I was ready to add it to his regular food rotation when I saw the words Made in China. And I paused.

I eventually decided to buy the food. But if the current situation is enough to give me pause, then China has a serious problem that they need to address.

I spent the bulk of my Saturday with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. It has been 8 years since I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone from the recommended books rack at the Dublin Barnes and Noble and every book since has been a winner.

If you have any interest in Harry, then you need to read the Deathly Hollows for yourself - before the spoilers track you down.

Congratulations to Good Idea’s Whoa Nelly, the 2007 National Amateur Retriever Champion. Good Idea’s Whoa Nelly is handled by Ken Neil and owned by Ken Neil and Brenda Little.

In addition, congratulations to the Freeridin Retrievers. Buffy, Mootsie, and Zowie all went deep into the championship. Mootsie made it to the 6th series, Zowie made it to the 3th, and Buffy was a finalist.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but I signed up for a lifetime accelerator account. It will certainly look good in my hosting garage, right next to my current 20GB disk and 60GB bandwidth capacity.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons Joyent can afford to provide these lifetime deals is people like me. I went in as number 188 of the VC200. I backed my bet with the Mixed Grill. And now I’ve added a small accelerator. Making my lonely little weblog one of the most severely over-infrastructured around.

Roy Pearson is a lawyer. That used to mean that he held all the cards in a civil action.

The Virginia Court of Appeals, in a 2005 review of Mr. Pearson’s divorce proceedings, upheld findings that he created “unnecessary litigation” in a relatively simple case and was responsible for “excessive driving up” of legal costs.

It’s not so simple any more. Pearson may be winning in the court of law, but he is losing big time in the court of public opinion. He is rapidly becoming the man with the $65 million dollar pants:

How does he get to $65 million? The District’s consumer protection law provides for damages of $1,500 per violation per day. Pearson started multiplying: 12 violations over 1,200 days, times three defendants. A pant leg here, a pant leg there, and soon, you’re talking $65 million.

Roy Pearson didn’t realize that the rules have changed. Knowledge of the law was once enough to insure either a personal victory or a pyrrhic victory for the other side. That’s still true. But the personal cost of legal action was once next to nothing. Now Pearson has his reputation and career tangled up in this case.

I spent most of my day waiting for a contractor who was supposed to arrive between 10am and noon, but didn’t arrive until around 1:30. I foolishly thought that 10am on Monday was early enough to avoid the usual backup. If I had known that a significant delay was in the cards, then I would had them give me a call at work - I’m only 10 minutes away.